T -te FALLING LeAVeS H ARRIET BLAKE was starting out to shop for a suit. She knew exactly what she wanted, and she'd have thought the simplest thing would be to order it from the store in N ew York where she had bought most of her clothes before she married and came South. But Bob, her husband, was a native Southerner, and he had urged her to try to find a suit at home. He said he didn't want the people down here in South Carolina to think Harriet was snooty, and, besIdes, the local merchants depended on local trade. He had sug- gested that she might at least try Lucy Bowen's little shop. Lucy was a sweet girl, he said, and she was showing a lot of spunk; Sam Bowen hadn't a cent beyond his G.I. readjustment allow- ance, and God alone knew when he would get tired of sitting around in beer joints talking about Guadalcanal. Bob had heard that Lucy wasn't making a great success in business, and he though t her friends all ought to stand behind her. Since Har-riet was a sweet girl her- self and a very reasonable one, she had promised to go to Lucy's the first thing, even though she was acquainted with the fussy, dirndlish costumes that estab- lishment generally carried. But as she opened her front door and stepped out into the autumn morning-the slow, absent-minded, Southern autumn morn- ing-she wasn't sure whether she could keep her promise or not. She felt suddenly so homesick and discouraged that she thought she was going to col- lapse. The street was lined with willow oaks, and although the weather was calm and tepid, the slender, pointed leaves had been dropping for a week now. They came down in quiet, in- termittent showers, like rain descending through sunlight from a wandering handkerchief cloud, and they lay where they fell-on sidewalks and lawns and porches and the tops. of parked cars. Everybody said there was no use do- ing anything about them unti] the last one had fallen,. Harriet had admired the Carolina spring, she had sweated cheerfully through the summer, but the placid dejection of this Southern November was something she could not endure. She leaned against the doorjamb, dismayed by her own weak- ness, and then, like fever mounting to combat infection in the blood, a sense of irritation rallied her. She looked scornfully at the pale-brown, drifted scene and thought grimly that it was like the people who lived here-vague, feckless, and complacent. "J ust like the whole damn South," she said to her- self. As she stood there on the doorstep, she could hear Pearlie, her colored maid, making her usual racket in the kitche.n -thumping china down on the drain- board, tossing handfuls of silver into the dishpan. Harriet half turned to go back and caution Pearlie not to chip th. cups, but she decided against it. You could tell a person something just so many times and then you might as well save your breath. She had gone over the dish washing routine with Pearlie not five minutes before, as she did every morning. The glasses first, in very hot water, then the silver, piece by piece, then the plates- "scrape them before you wash them." But nothing in life was routine to Pearlie. Her duties seemed to come to her fresh each day, and she received them always with fresh surprise. "You wants me to bresh up the sittin' room this mornin'?" she would ask, beaming. Bob and his friends had told Harriet how lucky she was to have Pearlie, who had been raised in the country and couldn't read or write òr, as Pearlie herself put it, "tell time good." She was án old-fashioned Southern darky, they said, without any fancy modern ideas. Every dumb thing she did seemed to please the young women Harriet knew. When Pearlie invited them to " " h " h h O f d rest t elr ats, t elr aces assume ex- pressions of pious satisfaction, and when they asked over the telephone whether 1\;lrs. Blake was in and Pearlie replied, " N M ' h h ' ", " h 0, 1 a am, s e s 0 aln t, t ey re- :- -.._. - .....w'":"':""=. y ":"- ": :;' ':"' " "">', . .. .. . ' Yo :::' :,..".... , . ..:. :::.: ;; " .. ;: ::..._:>:.' .. ... . :"""''': ,, " : r: , 5t : ,.., A , 'I;" t, : I :\.} .:' .1 j ri ! r-. " I';Î i :I liJ. f11 li;øJ't t ,u' ':' , .-l- _ '11 i ":Si' if!Yt ' 'ijl '4f f!!rtt!!J_ tlj,+ \T \ \f @ l -' , j,o )iO!\fcc,' (': Ch ! , .)(,,:. '.-; L).' ; , "__, , :'" ,<, :.. ':', "':"", , ,",' ",,,< " '.. ',',, , "'''''' ''':' ,,:...-..<-.' x'. ;,..; ........ ......- .' ..- . .. ." ..::.... ' :..':".' .... 001. .,._. ... ;'; ._..::.. ..::s-' ,'-"s, :.w' ,-^'..",:,,,,,,,,,,,,'"<>.-,,':,, .,.,, ""'.-,.. '- 37 ported it later to Harriet with delight. Sometimes they called up when they knew Harriet was out, just to hear Pearlie tell them she was. Harriet alone was not delighted. Pearlie's remarks made good copy for letters to her fami- ly in the North, but Harriet considered Pearlie's twenty dollars a week high wages for comic Telief. However, it would have been im- possible not to grow fond of Pearlie, she was so sleek and buxom and had a kind of clean, country grace; and be- sides, Harriet was sorry for all colored people. She thought it was terrible for Pearlie to be so illiterate, and she had borrowed a primer called "Day by Day with Baby Ray" from the little boy across the' street and had started teach- ing her how to read. She had been amazed by the aptness of her pupil and still more amazed when, after four les- sons, Pearlie had said she would have to stop, because learning made her nervous-like. Pearlie said she reck- oned she would just keep on going to the Holiness meetings and praying to the Lord to cast out her ignorance; she'd heard tell of a woman who had seen the Spirit and had immediately been able to read as good as the preach- er. Harriet opened her mouth to argue, but just in time she became aware of a polite, stubborn glaze settling over Pearlie's eyes that warned Harriet that she was being edged into an apostate posItIon. After that, she had determined to ignore Pearlie's difficulties and to con- '-- centrate on those of the ménage. Har- riet knew how to train servants, for she had often observed her mother breaking in a new maid; the important thing was not to let yourself be ruffled by failures. If you continued to be ex- plicit and optimistic, your instructions were supposed to take root. Patiently, then, Harriet had eXplained to Pearlie that vegetables could, and should, be cooked without grease, though she knew that the moment her back was turned, bits of fat back would be slipped into the boiling spinach. ("Just a mor- , k . fi "', " ) 0 sel, to ma e It ttIn teat. ver and over, she had drilled Pearlie in the correct, impersonal ritual of the tele- phone, knowing perfectly well that the next time it rang, it would be an- swered with the same old Southern Charm. H ARRIET heard the phone ringing now, and hurried away from the sound, down the steps to the street. In the big yard next door, Mrs. Y oung-